


Shark Time

by cgptttt



Category: Jaws (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 09:42:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1853401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cgptttt/pseuds/cgptttt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin Brody struggles with his blossoming fancy for Martin Hooper, and they're also hunting a shark in the Shark Hole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shark Time

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Maureen, for the beta work! Couldn't have done this without you. And thanks for the coffee that kept me up to write this. But you know, more sugar next time!

"Sharks, you know," says Quint. "The big sea beasties. Those swimming sonuvabitches?"  
   
"I know," says Brody, and wonders what the time is. Seven? Half past? He'd promised to be home by ten at night so he could boil a handful of potatoes and some apricots for dinner. It would be delicious, and Ellen would juice the cranberries.  
   
"What are sharks, Chief?" asks Quint, and Brody feels uncertain. "Take one large fishing hook. Size of your head. Made of pewter and copper alloy, half parts, no more, no less. Third day of the fuckin' moon. The new one. Dress it up real pretty with some meat and put it through a shark's left tongue. Sonuvabitches got two tongues. You know what you get?"  
   
Brody is irritated. Everyone knows that shark hooks the size of your head are made from pewter and copper alloy, half parts, no more and no less. Quint acting like he hadn't done third grade oceanology was tiring, especially given how all of Amity Island is living on borrowed Shark Time. Shark Time washed the skies out to a cinnabar red and raised the environmental mercury levels by at least three percent.  
   
"Should I choose another occupation?" asks Hooper. There's a piece of paper, like white confetti, lodged in the bushy fierceness of his facial hair. Brody reaches out to remove it, maybe keep it for his own, but by then Hooper is already gone. Brody wonders if Hooper was ever there.  
   
"I'm right here," Hooper says, from the other side of the cabin.  
   
"Fifteen people have died, Quint," Brody tells him, shaking off the intangible longing that was no doubt a symptom of Shark Time. "They all just keep going down into the shark hole, and unless we start acting we're going to lose twenty."  
   
"No," says Hooper. He knocks back a glass of moonshine. Then he knocks back a glass of cognac. "This is not like the other sharks. Not five at a time. No, I'm sure he'll go thirty. Ten at a time. He's not like the others. He's a bigger hole."  
   
He knocks back a glass of cyprus brandy. Brody wants to drink to forget the water. All of the water. He wants so badly, so desperately to forget sixty to fifty percent of himself.  
   
"Fuck water," says Brody.  
   
"So what's a shark, Chief?" asks Quint. "What's a shark to you?"  
   
"A hole," says Brody. "Everybody knows that, Quint. This isn't the time for basic --"  
   
"A shade of orange," says Hooper. "That's what a shark is to _me_ ."  
   
Brody has a breakthrough.  
   
 

  
*     *     *

  
   
The S.S. Orca sets sail in the morning, when the skies are the deep yellow of fake gold made by an overenthusiastic counterfeiter.  
   
Heavy winds assault the small boat, rocking it from side to side as it struggles forth on the turbulent seas, crew of four on board. Brody has on his police uniform and the broken motor skills of a drunk man, and he just really wants to sleep because the dramamine almost makes him feel like the shark is not his problem. Hooper wears a taut turtleneck sweater and pants. Brody finds himself noticing how the counterfeit golden glow of Shark Time lights up the natural curves of his body. Quint wears his shark hunting gear, with his shark hunting clothes.  
   
"So how many last night?" asks Quint, readying his crossbow and aiming into the distant wastes of the sea, possibly for no reason more discernible than any common gesture. Brody throws up his breakfast over the side of the hull. "How many did it eat? All of Amity Island? Did it open its maw wide and take them all in, like the devil born fresh? My old lady used to do that. Ah, she was a beast."  
   
"Quint," says Hooper. "If you act like a sexist prick one more time, I swear I'll --"  
   
He stops. He shoulders all the futility of a man debating with a particularly stubborn wall that is resolute on remaining silent. Red hot love explodes like the blast of a rocket through Brody's veins, and the propulsion sends his heart leaping to his throat and shooting straight of his mouth and before he can reach out, it flies overboard.  
   
"Wait," says Quint. Silence grips them, and Hooper giggles because he's ticklish. Awww.  
   
"You got meat in the water," Quint continues. "You didn't mean to, but you went and did it all the same. The shark will open up any damn moment now. Wait."  
   
It starts in the sky. Small, but perceptible particles of dust begin to fall from a raincloud, shining yellow in the afternoon heat. It settles gently over the crewmen of the S.S. Orca. The fourth man, named Connor who had been hitherto ignored for the purpose of a coherent narrative, turns his head skywards and makes the shrill call of the common hawk-cuckoo.  
   
"Jesus," says Quint.  
   
"It's bad," says Hooper. Brody realizes he was watching Hooper's curves again, the way the nylon-polyester blend of his off-white turtleneck held them so close and snug. Hooper is beautiful and perfect with the cosmological swirl of golden falling dust around him, as though he stands in the eye of a star system. They all stand in the eye of a star system. We all know the Great Shark is a parasite feeding on the cephalopod of the gods.  
   
Brody remembers boiling apricots and potatoes for dinner the night before. He remembers his conversation with Ellen while they cooked, and how Ellen had asked to be personally present for the spectacle of Brody and Hooper's first kiss. It would indeed be spectacular, she'd told him.  
   
But Ellen isn't present, and so Brody grows a new heart, and the Shark Hole opens up right under their boat, and the S.S. Orca drops like a rock into its depths.

  
   
*    *    *

  
   
In the slow, lax gravity of Shark Space, Quint wraps up telling them the story of the USS Indianapolis for the sixth time.  
   
"H-how do we get out of here?" Brody asks, hoping it is now his cue to speak. He feels very, very small and lost, and while he's had plenty of training for being confronted with a vacancy that promises anything but and could host any peril or pleasure, what with having lived on our tiny planet for forty years and everything, there's less to be said about his coping skills with how Hooper has his mouth attached to Quint's neck. Hooper is kissing him with the occasional grazing of his pearly white teeth, and Quint has a hand down the front of Hooper's pants.  
   
"No, really," Brody presses. "I have never been in Shark Space before. I don't even like the water. How do we get out of here."  
   
Hooper removes his mouth from Quint's neck. Brody is happy in Shark Space. "First of all, sharks aren't just in the water. Second of all --"  
   
"Son of god," whispers Quint, revelation lighting up in his eyes. It's contagious, because Hooper's eyes take on that knowing spark as well. Knowledge spreads between them like a forest fire, and Quint still has his hand in Hooper's pants.  
   
"It's you," says Hooper. "You brought the shark to Amity Island."  
   
Brody's new heart jumps, spooked because it's still a baby. "What do you mean? All those people dying was my fault? But how?"  
   
"Basic third grade oceanology!" yells Hooper. It's a disaster. "Sharks come to people that don't like water! You brought the shark!"  
   
"You bloody brought the shark, Chief," Quint agrees.  
   
"You brought the shark! The shark! Right here!" yells Connor.  
   
Brody now remembers basic third grade oceanology, and he feels terrible. "I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry, I didn't mean to, I forgot a lot of my third grade lessons --"  
   
"Even applied science?" Hooper narrows his eyes. Brody struggles to regain a hold of the rapidly spiraling situation. The boat itself begins to spiral, whirlpooling down into the unlit matter drain of the Shark Hole.  
   
"Of course I remember applied science!" Brody yells desperately. "And I remember advanced puppet-making!"  
   
"Fat lot of good that'll do you now!" screams Hooper.  
   
"You done fucked up," Quint agrees.  
   
"Wait, wait," says Brody, bracing himself against the mast. "Where is this boat going now?"  
   
"The other side of the shark, where else?" Hooper grits out. " _Basic third grade oceanology!_ "

  
   
*    *    *

  
   
Brody wakes up in bed, the warmth of Ellen against his side, the vermillion sun streaming in through the sheer curtains. He rises in the panicked flurry of a man trying to grasp at meaning, trying to unravel the Shark Space and find his way back home, not realizing he is already back home. Relief floods him when he does, and he falls back onto the pillows and sees Ellen smiling at him, wise and amused.  
   
"Hey," says Brody. He laughs, deciding he will never leave his bed again. He'd bought it at a trunk sale in New York City before moving to Amity Island. The first time he'd had sex with Ellen in a bed, it had been this bed. It was also the first time he'd ever had sex with her then-boyfriend, a few weeks after he'd encountered them on his night patrol and a few nights after he'd asked Ellen out. Brody likes this bed. It's a great bed, and definitely much preferable to being in the water. He'd never owned a water bed. The very thought gave him the shivers.  
   
Ellen laughs and rubs grit out of her eye. "Hey," she says, and places a hand on Brody's cheek."Hey. Martin."  
   
"Yeah?" asks Brody. He never wants to get up. He wants to call Hooper and invite him to partake in the never getting up. They could all partake in this stagnant but satisfying activity until the shark finds better waters and leaves Amity for good.  
   
"Honey," says Ellen. "You're still in Shark Space."  
   
"Fuck," says Brody. He knew it.  
   
"Also, Connor has my eyes," she says. "Go ahead and kiss that shark boy. I'll be watching."  
   
And it all makes sense to Brody now, every single bit of it. Especially the part where Ellen's eyes are only empty sockets, though still undeniably full of understanding. "I knew it," he says, out loud this time.

  
   
*     *     *

  
   
The vision passes.  
   
The other side of the shark is just as boring as the first, and Quint tells them the story of the USS Indianapolis for the eighth time, and now all that stands between Brody and Hooper is Brody's own courage and conviction to just, learn forward and kiss him.  
   
"But this time, everyone lived," says Quint with a merry laugh. "Every single damn sod on that ship lived! Nothing bad ever happened! The torpedo missed!"  
   
Brody notices that every time Quint told the tale, there were more survivors than not. Quint was perhaps rewriting history from within Shark Space. Brody wonders what he would rewrite, if he could. He feels selfish and cruel for not trying.  
   
"I was never bullied in sixth grade," says Hooper. "I was a strong child, I was confident, and I walked the halls like there was no tomorrow and seized the day."  
  
Brody grins, because Hooper is beautiful. He wonders if he could rewrite time to destroy the bullies that had hurt him. Nothing too drastic, just maybe have them sent off to endlessly dig in the storm-tormented Sahara. "Carpe diem."  
   
"It's in poor taste to talk about fish," says Hooper. Brody wants to explain himself, but he hardly has the chance as a sudden collision shakes the S.S. Orca and nearly tips Connor overboard.  
   
"Careful!" Brody yells. "You have my wife's eyes!"  
   
"There we are!" hoots Quint. "Let's drag this motherfucker up!"  
   
"Wait, what?" says Brody. "What are we dragging up?"  
   
"A shark!" replies Hooper. "What do you _think_ ?"  
   
"But we're in Shark Space!" Brody yells. The boat rocks again, violent and turbulent.  
   
"Why the hell wouldn't Shark Space be full of sharks?" yells Hooper. "Jesus!"  
   
Quint shoots the shark with a harpoon while Brody takes a moment to wallow in his humiliation. The shark resists, a majestic thrashing of fins and tails, and Quint grabs the rope attached to the projectile and pulls. What occurs next is a brief but impressive tug-of-war as Quint tries to haul the shark on board, a plan Brody suspects is extremely flawed, and it almost instantly segues into a wakeboarding of cosmic proportions. Except without the wakeboard, with the shark swimming frenzied through the empty blackness of Shark Space, and Quint trailing behind it, unwilling to let go of the rope.  
   
"Shoot him! Shoot the bastard!" Quint yells, voice echoing through Shark Space. Brody aims his revolver at the shark and fires until he's out of bullets, but the creature remains invincible and streaks through Shark Space like an evasive bee buzzing around one's living room.  
   
The shark circles the boat and sends it rocking again, and Connor tips off the deck.  
   
"NO! ELLEN!" screams Brody, his voice piercing the inky void. Connor hangs off the railing of the launch, Ellen's eyes no doubt in his pockets and on the brink of being lost to Shark Space for all time. Shark stars twinkled in the distance.  
   
"It's okay, it's okay!" yells Hooper. "Law of Life Exchange! One for one! Do it, he's a lost cause anyway, Martin!"  
   
"No!," yells Brody, his new heart getting its first workout. "I can't do that, Matt!"  
   
It turns out he can. He summons the Law of Life Exchange, and offers the already irretrievable Bartholomew Quint up for death instead of Connor. The rope fastening to the harpoon snaps, and Quint drops into the bottomless depths of Shark Space, gravity popping up in a limited area to play its designated role in ending Quint. The boat rocks again, and Connor is flipped on board safe and sound, all two pairs of eyes unharmed.  
   
The shark goes away for a while. A light drizzle begins in Shark Space, gravity being selective once again. Gravity also manifests in Brody's insides, where he feels the weight of the fact he has just traded a man's life for another.  
   
"Quint wasn't all bad," says Hooper, walking to join Brody on the deck. "I liked him."  
   
"I know you did," says Brody. He feels bad for Quint nonetheless. "He was a great shark hunter. He had a lot of shark things in his cabin. He made good moonshine, or so people said."  
   
"Martin," says Hooper. "Life is fleeting and quick and ephemeral and exactly like knocking back your last glass of cognac. Once it's done, there's no more cognac."  
   
"I need that cognac right now," Brody sighs.  
   
"You need to kiss me," says Hooper, and Brody feels the boat jolt under his feet. It's purely in his personal experience this time, because Connor remains standing and still, arms at his sides, face devoid of feeling, balancing just fine on the very top of the mast where he usually stands. Connor puts his hands in his pocket and out he takes a pair of eyes. He holds them out like an offering, and they turn of their own will upon his palm to peer down at the boys.  
   
Brody takes Hooper's hands in his, and they're soft with no markings of rough seamanship. He leans in and presses his lips to Hooper's hungrily, and Hooper opens his mouth and goes in for the kill, his tongue swiping up Brody's surprisingly still more hesitant one. The light drizzle wets their clothes with a sweet dampness, and Hooper lets go of Brody's hands to instead, wrap his arms around his neck.  
   
They end up on the floor of the boat, limbs tangled, no longer keeping count or track of kisses, Brody's uniform in disarray and Brody's hands offering Hooper the intimate touch on his skin instead of the off-white turtleneck. Hooper trails kisses down Brody's stomach, licks down his treasure trail and leaves behind glistening specks of saliva on hair, and quickly unclasps his belt to get at the real deal.  
   
"Ah, god," moans Brody, hands gently clutching Hooper's wild hair. The shark was still out there, but that is the least of his concerns right now. The shark is nothing more than a distant memory when Hooper is busy freeing his hard cock from the confines of his briefs, and lapping experimentally at the head with a deft tongue. Electric sensations tickle up Brody's spine as Hooper starts taking him in his mouth, reminiscent of whole ships disappearing into the feeding hole of a shark.  
   
Brody lies back on the wet deck and lets sensation wash over him like the waves of the sea, but like the pleasant opposite. He loves this as much as he hates the sea, and he loves Hooper, and Hooper continues bobbing his head up and down on Brody's cock until Brody feels awash with pleasure and heat, hanging onto the edge with pleasure radiating through his body and the comfortable weight of Hooper resting on his legs. He closes his eyes and imagines this is how a man half-swallowed by a shark must feel, the pressure around his lower half, the excited heat of the moment, and the promise of returning to the safe embrace of a state of pre-birth. He comes hard against the back of Hooper's throat, and by the time he regains his senses and basic comprehension of the current universal laws of physics Hooper is kissing him and he can taste himself.  
   
"Wait, let me -- " he breathes against Hooper's mouth, "let me return the favor --"  
   
They reverse positions, Brody kissing at Hooper's nude hips and inner thighs, licking streaks of wetness over soft skin before licking up his cock. He laps up the precome from Hooper's slit, and Hooper bucks his hips and Brody smiles. Brody is happy in Shark Space. He dips a fingertip in Hooper's bellybutton, and Hooper giggles.  
   
"I love you," says Hooper, and Brody's new heart instantaneously grows into its fullest potential.  
   
"I love you too," says Brody, taking Hooper's cock out of his mouth. "And Ellen."  
   
"I can live with that," says Hooper, looking bothered but only because his cock is no longer in Brody's mouth.  
   
It isn't long before Hooper comes, shuddering against the boat floor and Brody licks up every bit. They resume kissing, in the dark tranquility of Shark Space, up until when the boat rocks and sends Connor tipping off the mast again.  
   
"The shark!" Hooper exclaims.  
   
"Oh yeah, the shark," Brody replies, his nerves singing with the layovers of alcohol, dramamine and sex. "The shark that's still out there. Connor, do _not_ tell me you dropped those eyes."  
   
Connor proudly displays Ellen's eyes, and Brody breathes a sigh of relief. "Let's go, er, take a look."  
   
"I'm _nude_ ," Hooper complains, so Brody treks alone to the side of the deck and peers out into the depths of Shark Space, and what he sees has his new heart quickly age into its septuagenarian cycle.  
   
"Matt, Matt." Brody's voice shakes. "Matt, you've got to see this."  
   
Hooper pulls up his pants and joins him at the side of the deck, and says, "Good lord."  
   
It's a speck in the distant below, a speck now, but rapidly growing in size as it conquers the distance between itself and the boat. In the matter of seconds it's shark-shaped, teeth bared, rising up at them at a staggering speed.  
   
"It's approaching us at rocket-speed," Hooper observes. "As though it was launched from the remote darknesses by a shark cannon."  
   
"No, wait," says Brody. "There's something else."  
   
There is indeed something else; another shape, bulbous on top of the shark at this distance, but in a few seconds it becomes clearer. It is clearly a man straddling the creature. In a few more seconds, realization flies into the crewmen still left on board the Orca at a speed that could overtake the shark were it a race.  
   
"QUINT!"  
   
Quint sits straddling the shark, as it flies up from below the boat and passes it, heading towards the unseeable ceiling of Shark Space. Quint cackles, loud and obnoxious, and waves a newfound cowboy hat at all of Shark Space and beyond in a wild, ecstatic frenzy as he screams his joy to the seven spheres of heaven. Angels could probably hear him, but Brody knows they don't really exist.  
   
Quint rides the shark up to the dome of Shark Space and then, to the amazement and entertainment of all those aboard the S.S. Orca, the shark explodes in a visual treat not intended for the faint-hearted. The fire of the explosion casts a radius of light around the S.S. Orca and Brody sees things that are most definitely not sharks that were hitherto hidden in the darkness. He supposes only sharks are inherently visible in Shark Space without light, but given the sights he has just seen, frankly, he's okay with that.  
   
"Ah yes," says Brody, wistful. "Just like all the drawings of Shark Space I did back in grade school."  
   
And then, pieces of flesh and blood rain down on them, the shark fallout of the explosion. They land with wet sounds upon the deck of the Orca, and splatter down the sides of the boat in running, red, viscous rivulets. One of them lands on Brody's head and he shakes it off, and blushes when he catches sight of Hooper grinning at him. Awww.  
   
Brody doesn't ask why the shark had exploded. He's beginning to remember third grade oceanology now. "Are we done? Did we get it? The right shark?"  
   
"It's the right shark," says Hooper.  
   
"How do we know that?" asks Brody. He knows he must innately trust Hooper with sharks, but he also remembers that Shark Space is full of sharks. It could have been _any_ shark. "Don't we have to kill all of the sharks in Shark Space?"  
   
"Jesus Christ man, what for?" cries Hooper. "You want them to go extinct? You out for blood? You kill all the sharks in Shark Space you kill all the sharks on Earth!"  
   
"Oh, oh no," says Brody, deflating. "I definitely don't want that. But how do we know this is the right --"  
   
Hooper smiles at him, and picks up a wet, bloody organ from the floor. "Here," he says, and presses the fist-sized muscle into Brody's palm.  
   
"Oh," says Brody, recognizing his old heart. He feels a little wobbly from the sentimentality of it all. "Thank you." He doesn't mention he has grown a new one, as that would ruin the moment.  
   
"And look," says Brody, pointing up to the ceiling of Shark Space, at the place where the shark had met its demise. The area glows blue; the soft, night time hues of an ocean under a clear sky. "Water."  
   
"What does that mean?" asks Brody.  
   
"That's the exit," says Hooper. "Here, take my hand. We can swim up to the top."  
   
"What about the boat?" asks Brody, feeling a little mesmerized. Hooper's hand is soft and warm in his.  
   
"Fuck the boat," shrugs Hooper. "We've always needed a bigger one."

  
   
*     *     *

  
   
Connor is buoyant, and he serves well as they paddle back towards shore under the twinkling stars of Amity Beach. The skies are a deep cobalt blue, no longer shrouded by the angry crimson of Shark Time.  
   
"What day is this?" asks Brody. The days of the week had been harder to tell with Shark Time and the consistent redness of the skies.  
   
"Wednesday," frowns Hooper. "No, it's Tuesday, I think. I don't know. Somewhere in that general area."  
   
Connor sleeps, a lifesaver of weightlessness, as they keep kicking. It's a picture of  serenity.  
   
"You know," says Brody. "I can't believe I used to hate the water."  
  
Hooper smiles, shimmery flecks of water dotting his beard in the moonlight, and leans over to kiss him. "And now you won't be bringing sharks over to Amity."  
   
"Always a plus, that," says Brody.  
   
"Always a plus," Hooper agrees.  
   
 


End file.
